Found the rules in the book (big dark box), but one thing seems "buggy" to me.

In boarding combat, the ship with the highest "crew value" gets a bonus. While this sound quiet fine at first, the crew value still is a PERCENTAGE of the aprox. total crew. This would mean a Cruiser with heavy crew loses (down to 75% of his crew) would be at a high disadvantage in boarding combat against a raider at full crew (100%).

Whatsoever, in "men" the raider will have about 24.000 crew total while the Cruiser would still have about 70.000 crew men total. If one is to assume that both have the same "percentage" of "fighters" in the crew, the advantage should be with the Cruiser. Or wouldn´t it?

Whilte counting and re-counting crew total is a little much for a smooth game, shouldn´t ships gain a kind of "boarding bonus" for there size?

Like +10 a frigatte, +30 for a light cruiser and +50 for Cruiser?

While on the topic, why are the "Barracks" not giving any bonus in boarding combat? The fact that I have (another) 2.500 to 5.000 ("thousands and thousand") of trained soldiers on my side should make some difference in combat. Or shouldn´t it for some reason (like "these are ground soldiers and useless in space boarding actions")?

Gregorius21778 said:

I think it's more of men per meter of the ship. Thus if you have a cruiser with only 70% of the crew left, in absolute terms you would have more men but they'd be spread all over the ship, while an frigate with 100% crew would have every parrt of the ship covered.

Luctius said:

That is good point, thank you.

"one down, one to go". Anyone any idea why the Barracks aren´t taken into account?

Hmm, well, you'd have to actually be on a military endevour, or the barracks would be empty at the moment. If you took on x soldiers, then you could presumably count them as x extra crew during boarding actions for their stay, albiet pending a check to get them to obey or cooperate with their commanders. But just having the barracks doesn't necessary give you any specific amount of soldiers, and therefore no set bonus, I'd say.

I am a little ashamed. I read that the Barrack actually DO give a bonus on boarding actions & hit and run... well, "never mind"

Hah. I should have checked the book myself, before trying to think of a workaround.

I've been wondering about the lack of size modifiers in boarding combat myself. While the "Man per Meter" idea has some merit, I think there should still be something that stops a Frigate boarding and seizing a Battleship when both are in the same state of repair.

I think the easiest way would be to say that a ship has a boarding bonus equal to +1 per 1000 crew as listed in the Hull Class descriptions. So, a Sword class Frigate with 26,000 crew has a bonus of +26, while a Lunar class Cruiser with 95,000 crew has a bonus of +95.

In this system the Frigate will never win in a boarding attack on the Cruiser if both are undamaged. But since you get +10 for every full ten points more of both morale and population, if the Cruiser has been knocked down to 60% or less in both over the course of a long battle then an undamaged Frigate suddenly pulling in close to board has a good chance of pulling it off.

Oh, it can get worse then that. Boarding is a ordinary check +10, throw in Murder Servitors and a teleportarium, and you're looking at a +50 bonus to the command check, throw in a barracks and it's nearly a certainty that they will successfully hit and run, disabling or damaging a ship's engines since the servitors allow them to pick, and in all likelihood tearing it a new one shortly thereafter.

BaronIveagh said:

My players decided to go with teleportors, murder servitors and a barracks.....

If your trader has devoted that much to boarding actions I say let him have at it. This is the same thing as an assassin beefing out their close combat. I doubt anyone would complain that the assassin can take out a guy in power armour in one turn of close combat but if they get into a long range firefight they are in trouble.

by the letter of the rules as I read em... yeah, small & high morale healthy beats large and damaged.

However, a quick and easy misapplication of another rule elsewhere can make it more sensible....

Page 247 gives some combat difficulty modifiers.

Use the modifiers for outnumbering in Melee. Multiply the base size * morale % * crew % to get a boarding size... and compare combat sizes.

Or just +10 per size bigger than target.

The lack of size modifiers definitely fits for Hit&Run - it's the whole point of asynchronous warfare.

With boarding combat, on the other hand side...

The way ive decided to do it is that if the diffrences in population% is greater then 10 i will be giving +5 to the 'larger' pop ship for every FULL 10% more crew pop they have. since if the diffrence is only like 5% then most stations will be crewed by someone but after about 10% casualties then the 'smaller' pop ship is starting to show holes.

Extrapolating from Space Fleet, a Galaxy Troop Carrier has 4 "Barracks" and each can hold a Regiment of Troops. The size of a Regiment varies depending on the type, but averages 5000 troopers. It says they could be up to 6k (assuming a pure Infantry Regiment), so a ship with 4 Barracks could hold up to a grand total of 24,000 troops....which (in Space Fleet) could all be used for boarding a ship.

The whole crew population thing is one of the details I don't like about RT ship combat.

The 'men per metre' thing is okay for explaining the bonus you get for a higher population-percentage, but that still leaves uncracked and illogical the chesnut of how the triumphant side manages to slaughter 1% of the enemy crew regardless of their comparative sizes.

For example...a ship with a crew of 3,000 does a hit-and-run on a ship with a crew of 45,000...if the attacking (smaller) ship wins they slay 450 enemy crew, but if the defender (larger crew) ship wins, they only manage to kill 30 of the attackers.

That just doesn't seem quite right to me.

For example...a ship with a crew of 3,000 does a hit-and-run on a ship with a crew of 45,000...if the attacking (smaller) ship wins they slay 450 enemy crew, but if the defender (larger crew) ship wins, they only manage to kill 30 of the attackers.

That just doesn't seem quite right to me.

Oh, that actually fits. It's Hit&Run, not Stand&Fight. Of those 450, 430 will be some luckless gun crews, enginarium workers, deck swabbers and other crew members who don't even have a weapon, stuck at the wrong place at the wrong time and mowed down by automatic fire or exploding machinery.

Do remember that Hit&Run are sabotage missions, a small team that doesn't have to fight the entire ship.
I view them more as a small well instructed team (Hence the command test) that tries to melta charge a specific target.
They need to avoid the well placed guards (the opposed command test) to achieve this.

Pretty simple, I like the system.

Barracks Bonus equals better soldiers
Murder Servitors Bonus, Assassin Drones that secretly kill those well placed guards
Teleportorium, better deployement of the saboteurs

Santiago said:

Only when carrying out a Military objective that involves transporting troops. It doesn't always give the bonus.

Granted, but I was just explaining how I viewed the reasons for those bonuses

Only when carrying out a Military objective that involves transporting troops. It doesn't always give the bonus.

You just need to carry troops - no need for a military objective, although you'll probably often have one when boarding is an issue.